Guest guest Posted January 19, 2001 Report Share Posted January 19, 2001 Hi Harsha, Very wonderful post! I too have ssen children with very strong tendencies towards ahimsa and vegetarianism. And the parents are not always vegetarians themselves. About the substitutes -- don't know the name, but my Chinese Buddhist friends have turned me on to a wonderful Taiwanese soy product that has the same visual appearance and consistency as a kind of sliceable lunch meat. It tastes like sliced ham or turkey, and is great cold as a lunch-meat substitute, or fried as a sausage substitute, or cooked in faux-meat and vegetable dishes. Never rubbery like so many other substitutes. It tastes better than the thing it stands in for! Great entre' to vegetarianism. If anyone is interested, I'll try to find the name. I'm posting this to other groups as well. Sorry for any irritating cross-posting... With metta and ahimsa, --Greg At 10:02 AM 1/19/01 -0500, Harsha wrote: >Perhaps this comment has already been made but there are many soy substitute >products for meat which children really like and can even take to school for >school lunches. Generally children internalize the values of the parents. If >the parents are vegetarians, more than likely the children will be as well >(until they get older and experiment or rebel). > >However, if reason for being a vegetarian are explained to children by >parents and are understood, the children are likely to be life long >vegetarians. > >If one parent is a vegetarian and the other one eats meat, the child may >feel conflicted. These are psychologically complex issues and have to be >handled with great gentleness and care with respect for the innate >tendencies of the child. > >I have seen children in whom the past life tendencies towards Ahimsa and >vegetarianism are very strong refuse to eat meat when offered even by their >parents! I know one child whose mother ate meat but father was a vegetarian. >Although the child has a very close bond with the mother, he refused to eat >meat when offered. He was 5 at the time! Two years later his mother became a >vegetarian. She says that her son converted her! > >Love to all >Harsha > >// Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 19, 2001 Report Share Posted January 19, 2001 Namaste Harshaji, Gregji: Good to see your observations on ahimsa and vegetarianism. Let me add some additional points. First, thanks for your excellent observations on Children's adoption to Vegetarianism. I want to share my personal experience with respect to my two adult sons who are still vegetarians. I and my wife both come from a family with vegetarian tradition and to a large extent, it did influence my kids being vegetarians. In our house we only prepare, eat and serve vegetarian foods for the residents and also to the visitors. Honestly, we didn't force our kids that they should be vegetarians outside our home. Nor it is ever possible to force vegetarianism. We are not averse to others eating meat preparations and several of our friends and their kids are not vegetarians. When we attend dinner parties arranged by those friends, they serve both vegetarian and meat dishes. Somehow our children didn't have the desire to change their habit. Once when we went out for a picnic in the part where hot-dogs were served along with other vegetarian dishes. My younger son who was 7 years at that time was quite curious about the hot-dog and it looked like a boiled Carrot. But we didn't eat it and he also didn't eat. When returned back home, he asked us what is a Hot Dog and how it was made. Fortunately, we located a documentary Video in the library describing how hotdogs and sausages were made. We showed that video to both our children and it had a permanant impact on their mind. That documentary has high potentials for even hot-dog lovers to hate hot-dogs! Our experience indicates that parents, friends, knowledge and special circumstances have influence in what we eat, see, hear, speak and write. It is also true that parents are influenced by their children in changing their food habits. For example, in California, Vegetarianism is growing fast because a significant percent of teenagers are vegetarians. It seems that parents are quite agreeable to listen to their children with respect to health related issues. When the kids ask their parents not to smoke or not to drink or not to eat fatty foods, the parents become more responsive! regards, Ram Chandran advaitin , Gregory Goode <goode@D...> wrote: > Hi Harsha, > > Very wonderful post! I too have ssen children with very strong tendencies > towards ahimsa and vegetarianism. And the parents are not always > vegetarians themselves. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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